e e e e e right good evening everyone I am Dr Kim H Pro superintendent of AA schools and thank you so much for coming out this evening to learn more about our upcoming attendance boundary changes uh we have a lot of information that we're going to share tonight with you uh this first half of the evening and some of the topics that we'll be going over this evening is just a little on who we are as a school district and how much uh acreage that we cover in the eight cities that we're in what an attendance boundary actually is why attendance boundaries need changing at this time that change process timeline to parameters that were used to form the proposed scenarios that you'll be seeing seeing this evening the transition plan and of course your opportunity to share your thoughts your thoughts are very important to us so tonight will'll include splitting into smaller groups and getting feedback and ask asking questions just after the presentation so as we share information the next 30 minutes uh make sure you take note on any comments or questions you may want to share afterwards so a area schools so before we get started let's just take a small minute to talk about one thing that we're striving to do at oio Area School District so the last dist year we've been working towards becoming one Community for all where all voices are valued and heard that's not just something we say that's something we're living by and working very hard for that to happen so this means all of our stakeholders all of our students staff parents and caregivers and community members play an important part in our district you are a valuable part of our district and we want to make sure everyone here understands that you should feel seen and appreciated as part of oio area schools always whether that's today tomorrow or a few weeks from now and a year from now please do understand that each and every one of you are important to us so the main way that we ensure all voices are valued and heard is through a concept called holding space it's foundational work here in a AIO Area School District and what that means is that holding space means that we're walking alongside another person on whatever Journey they're on without judging them or making them feel inadequate trying to fix them or trying to impact that outcome when we hold space for other people we open our hearts we offer unconditional support and we let go of judgement and control so tonight as we enter our space together we do ask for everyone to be respectful and understand that each person here has their own narrative their own questions and their own lived experiences and we will be inclusive of everyone here your all ideas are good ideas so such an environment will allow us to be ensure that we're able to hear everyone everyone is able to be their authentic self this will help us build a more collaborative community as we venture through this attendance boundary change so I just want to say thank you in advance for that so what is uh who is oio Area School District we're just going to look at some real quick facts on this so a area schools encompasses all are parts of eight communities the ranges from Dayton Rogers and Cochran in the far Cochran in the far Northwest parts to plet to the South and Brooklyn Center to the east our largest communities of course is Brooklyn Park and Maple Grove and with the city of oio and a center about 160,000 community members live with this entire area we are the fifth largest school district in the state of Minnesota with approximately serving 21,000 students more than 15,000 of our students choose to utilize the transportation the service that is offered and this equates to 36,000 buses daily we have a total of 31 school buildings currently there are 24 to additional elementary middle and high schools and seven special program sites and these include an area Learning Center and early childhood centers soon there'll be a 32nd School building thanks to our community sport for building a better future a new elementary school has been built in a very northwest corner of the district and that is set to open in Fall of 2026 our school buildings are between 24 and 100 years old so the sizes of each vary Accord because of the different time periods in which they were built which has created capacity level differences amongst district schools so this is most noticeable currently at our elementary school level the more older schools of course tend to be smaller and the newer schools a little larger the school buildings were also place where Community growth was being experienced in those different areas and space that was available so in the general 6 Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center seem to be more more uh in established neighborhoods right now and Maple Grove Dayton and Plymouth are more growing areas so one last fact in case you wanted to know all these school buildings are spread out on 703 acres of land so it's important to you to know as where our community members uh F about how we're doing it achieving our mission the good news is that feedback from our uh Community continues to show that they think highly of us and we're going to continue to work hard to earn that uh right and we have strong support for what's been done in a recent survey as you can see 82% of survey respondents said good or excellent on how well the quality of Education in Acera schools is 87% said all or most students needs are being met and 84% so they're proud of our schools and will recommend them to others all right let's dive into attendance boundaries so some lingo we're using to share about this change can be conf using we want to make sure that we're clear and understandable as you interact with this information this evening so an attendance boundary an attendance boundary is a geographical area from which students are eligible to attend a district school this means your household address is assigned in elementary middle and high school so in essence this process may change the elementary and or middle school your household is current Cur ly set to attend so a quick note students may be moved between school buildings within the district but attendance boundary changes will not impact which students are assigned to attend a area schools versus area district schools like a Noah henen white Zetta or Robinsdale so the big question why now why are we doing attendance boundary boundaries now more simply put it has to do where our students are going and what our schools can hold in their capacity this can obviously change from year to year or decade to decade so we have a Fab committee called enrollment and capacity management advisory committee and our district has had it for several years or ecac and the role of ecac is they monitor enrollment ships in conjuction in conjunction with our building capacities for the last several years their most recent reports had detailed that a significant enrollment in balance exist and that is at the point that it needs to be addressed spe specifically there is a significant growth in the Northwest portion of our district future Housing and Redevelopment are expected in these same areas and to in addition to this there are also some district schools that are under capacity so ecm's work helped to form to 2023 building a better future plan and our referendum and from those suggestions and an additional facility space became part of the 2023 referendum as a result again we thank everyone in our public for that and in turn with the building better future as well from 2023 a new elementary and additions will be uh added to Maple Grove Senior High was approved due to space constraints so during the 2023 build better referendum it was additionally noted as well that attendance boundary changes were needed no matter what the outcome of the election and no matter what the referendum was going to do we needed to do attendance boundary changes so with additional facility space been added within the community's refer referendum support attendance boundaries listen as closely will be limited only to Elementary and Middle School therefore impacting fewer families as Pro as promised just to be clear that means there will be no changes made at the high school level that would just be awful okay so we understand it's all awful but to move one high school to another high school that's they compete oh that wouldn't be good okay we understand that community members make a lots of decisions based on their household school's assignment so this process is not something we want to be doing often in fact it has been more than 15 years since we've last done changes on this scale so we we've come to the point that now is needed so what is the timeline for this boundary change the founding change process actually kicked off this past fall at that time community members had an opportunity to provide their thoughts on the parameters the core team should be creating to even create the proposed scenarios that have been shown the last few months so we have input from 3,000 community members who participated and helped guide us of what those Community built parameters should be since late September the attendant's boundary changes core team has been utilized in E community buil parameters to develop proposed scenarios and in January uh four proposed scenarios were brought forth from that work nearly 3,500 community members Shar their thoughts on at that time the feedback helped to lower the number of scenarios and make and make adjustments to them tonight you will have the opportunity to provide input on those updates these events in March will likely wrap up the district-wide feedback opportunity so it's really really important for us to hear your voice tonight and please understand it doesn't just have to be tonight you're able to go online you're able to process and give us that information so in April we'll be once again reviewing that Community F uh feedback and consider adjustments to all the updated scenarios which we deal with the first four final attendance boundaries will then be announced in May and the new attendance boundaries however will not go into effect and to follow 2026 you seeing the connection that's when the elementary school opens in 2026 as well the only exception to this is cescu Elementary uh these families will make moves in a fall of 2025 our building and better future plan shared that an elementary school should be repurposed to serve pre kindergarten grades enrichment and community-based programming needs so after much consideration Crestview Elementary was chosen to do this so Crestview kindergarten through grade five students and staff will be moving schools this coming fall of 2025 and started their new school in 2526 these families will not have to do another move in the fall of 20 on the fall of 26 so you likely to put the two together the 2026 timeline everything matches up with the new school in the Northwest Maple Grove so this time we're going to turn over to John morset Executive Director of Finance and operations to walk us through the parameters and those updated scenarios for this evening okay thank you Dr H um so we're going to start by taking a look at the community built parameters that the core team worked with in order to create the proposed scenarios they are Center our core values honor of Integrity belonging inclusion Innovation and Excellence transparency and intrinsic value ensure scenarios can function with within our system including but not limited to Transportation building utilization and capacity enrollment both current and future teaching and learning program offerings and financial costs ensure scenarios have longevity in our system follow the teacher student class targets established by the school board consider the number of students impacted in each scenario and consider the student demographics of each scenario as we continue consider connecting more school RS from level to level try to keep neighborhoods as intact intact as much as possible minimize non-continuous non- adjoining areas maintain the 8/10 of a mile Elementary and one mile secondary transportation service areas for walk zones maintain safety standards in regard to bus routing trying to avoid major highways so on avoid lengthy travel times on buses and comply with state laws Schoolboard policy and negotiated agreements so you can see the list is a pretty good um cross-section of parameters as we reviewed and updated the scenarios you may notice that some of the parameters adhere to more of these guidelines and others a little less just depends on each scenario the core team did their best to utilize all the parameters as much as possible again while utilizing the size schools and current placement of school buildings that we have today or are soon expecting in just a few minutes we'll be going through the updated scenarios as Dr H mentioned you'll have the opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions in the small group portion of tonight's event which is after the presentation so in the meantime please make sure to note any of your comments and questions and hang on to them and we'll get to those as soon as the presentations are done so a quick overview of our updated scenario we're presenting you with two scenarios this evening January scenarios one and two moved forward with some adjustments between 2000 2600 elementary and middle school students are proposed to move in these scenarios which is approximately 9 to 12% of our total District in um enrollment bullet points three and four mention specific groups of students that would be impacted as noted in the community built parameters this was looked at for all scenarios and just just a snapshot of that the racial demographics of schools wouldn't change by more than 5% in the majority of cases and poverty Dem demographics of schools also wouldn't change by more than 5% in the majority of cases all right so we're going to take a look at scenario number one I want to start by grounding you to what you're looking at to make sure we're we're all talking apples to apples so scenario one that moved forward from the first section has been renamed 1A with some modifications to it it's not exactly the same as January scenario one those tweaks have been made um but I wanted to walk you through this so to start when you're looking at this from a color perspective the colors represent the middle schools so Orange Is The Boundary attendance area for oio Middle red for Maple Grove middle green for North View middle and blue for Brooklyn Middle within each color group you will see proposed attendance boundaries for the elementary schools feeding each particular Middle School you'll also see one Elementary School Edinbrook Elementary with a purple hashed coloring this school is proposed to split to two middle schools one of the goals in the parameters is to reduce the number of elementary schools that currently split between different middle schools to give you a reference today we have seven elementary schools that split to more than one Middle School in both of the scenarios we're proposing there is just one school that would split in scenario one approximately 2600 Elementary Middle School students would be impacted this is about 400 fewer than the January proposal some of the strengths of this scenario are building use and efficiency elimination of non- adjoining Geographic areas and an improved feeder like structure as students would move with classmates from elementary to middle school and this scenario would last for the foreseeable future specifics on the elementary school neighborhoods would remain mostly intact as more natural barriers such as major roadways Parks creeks and lakes are utilized all but one school building being Oak View would be within its own attendance boundary meaning the students closest to each would be able to attend and potentially walk there at the middle school the non- adjoining Geographic areas that currently exist near North View Middle School would be eliminated and all but one school building Brooklyn Middle School would be within its own attendance boundary meaning again closest students would be able to walk and attend um potentially they're close to school in both of those scenarios with ob and BMS um their attendance area is across the street so they still have a walk Zone it's just in One Direction not in a circle around the building okay so this is scenario 2A which has been updated we again we could Carri forward scenario 2 from the first round made some changes and and have 2A uh this affects approximately 2,000 elementary and middle school students um which is about 100 fewer than the January proposal some of the strengths of this scenario are its low number of changes functionality within the system including efficiencies with building use and transportation services elimination of of almost all non- adjoining Geographic areas and an improved feeder likee structure as students would again move more frequently with classmates from elementary to middle school this scenario would last for the foreseeable future uh specifics at the elementary school level neighborhoods would remain mostly intact as more natural barriers again are followed um following the similar from the first scenario one Elementary School building being oaku would not be within its own attendance found boundary but again right across the street would be within it so most students can walk to their more their closest neighborhood school at the middle school level we've eliminated non- adjoining Geographic areas that currently exist in the North View Middle School area and again same information with Brooklyn Middle School um would not be within its own attendance boundary but the line starts right across the street so now that you've seen the updated scenarios the common question is how does this affect me and my family um to help you with that please check out the boundaries website for interactive maps for each proposed scenario in which you can type in your address and find out the specific impacts for you for each scenario the website is district279.org boundaries Chromebooks are available tonight if you'd like to take a look right over on the table back there um next we want to take just a few minutes to go through some commonly asked frequently asked questions more questions can of course be asked in your small groups and are available extensively on the website one of the most common questions that we want um that we' get is if I want to go to a different School in my boundary can I there's uh we'll say yes and no there's a couple answers to this for you so in short here's the best way that we can explain how we are going to handle this first of all if you've taken action to select a different school for your child um than their current assigned School meaning you have um applied for IND District transfer or you an open enroll family from outside side of our district boundaries coming in you've you've taken action on your students enrollment you have the right to maintain that action that you've taken you've already we've already made a promise to you we are going to honor our promise that we made to you so you get to hold that same status um you do not need to reapply for anything to to maintain the status where you are as shared in January students attending their home school will be required to attend the school that they're assigned to through the change process one adjustment however has been made to this uh feedback from the January meetings was um very clear that that the impact on students in the transitional years of fifth grade and 8th grade um that people's request were that we allow a hold harmless and allow those folks to finish Elementary fifth grade in their existing school and middle school 8th grade in their existing school so the district made the decision we we listened we hear you and we agree and we'll allow graders to have a choice if they would like to remain in their current elementary for the one last year and eighth graders again this is in the 2627 school year would have that same option to remain in that school there is one caveat that's important to note the district does not have the ability to provide transportation for that just due to the complexity um but we are again willing to at least make sure that that opportunity is is available for families excuse me the currently restricted IND District transfer and open enrolled schools will remain in place until the review has been completed which will happen no later than mid January of 2027 which will be the time in time for any new in District transfer requests for the 2728 school year so we will be closed for any District transfer until January of 2027 where that process will open up um framework is a great example of this that building has been very tight for quite some time and and one of the reasons why we're doing this is we need to see how the boundary changes will actually impact the schools before in District transfer takes over and starts drastically changing it busting information that goes along with these changes will be shared as it usually is in the regular back to school season so fall of 26 implementation expect to see that communication in August of 2026 lots more answers to frequently asked questions have been added to the district's um boundaries website again feel free to check them out district279.org boundaries and at this time I'm going to turn it back to Dr H to talk about trans transition and feedback all right it's almost your time to uh talk and give us your input so first of all our district really appreciates the flexibility with these changes we know our entire aary schools team is here to help with that transition please know that at all of our schools as always will be very welcoming to all of our new baby eot college students are babies as day of my life but uh students Scholars and their families as say this change is made and please know to make sure to reach out and connect if your school is reassigned also if you do have any questions don't hesitate to reach out to our hotline and build a better future at district279.org or the phone number listed 763 391 8990 okay now we're here at the time that the uh reason that you came here the feedback portion of the evening as I've shared before our community voice is very important just how the information we received from prior meetings scenarios were changed we've listened to you so please take your time to share it tonight once again if you need to process more with it look at it and then you can also share in another way so this evening there's two ways you can choose to provide feedback option one is you've been assigned to a group and your name tag color matches a small group that you'll be part of so the facilitator that small group will hold up a color for that group so you can easily find where you can go on that room so if you haven't been assigned feel free to check in at the check-in table and we'll be able to give you the card the second way of course you can provide feedback is to utilize the QR code on the screen or fill out the Google form via the website link so all your feedback whether it's in the group or on the form will be viewed by our core team and taken into consideration please know we do take your feedback into consideration once again final attendance boundaries are expected to be approved by the board in May change doesn't happen to fall of 2026 okay there's several ways for you to stay informed refer to district279.org boundaries for the latest perod and caregivers can stay tuned in regular updates we Supply via email and text all of our community members can connect through better future district279.org once again that number 763 391 8990 all right now is your time for tonight to help us make these needed changes the best that we can be thank you for being tonight and please share your voice with us thank you